National Championship Update

More info about Nationals Championships in Europe and other TCG areas was posted up on the UK site recently, and needless to say, I'm not too happy with Ireland's situation:

National Qualifiers & National Trials

Dear duelists,At this time, we would like to give you more detailled information on the National Qualifiers that we announced recently.

“National Qualifiers”, as their name suggests, offer qualifications to their country’s National Championships. They are events designed to draw a large number of players and will be run as Swiss-style events without any playoffs; the format is Advanced Constructed.

Each player will receive two to three boosters as participation prize, depending on the tournament’s participation fee (this will be between EUR 8 and EUR 12, varying by country). In addition to those participation prizes, National Qualifiers offer an exclusive “Regionals” playmat to the Top 8 players, as well as additional booster prizes at the organizer’s discretion.

Of course, the most exciting part about competing in a National Qualifier is the chance to qualify for Nationals. Each National Qualifier offers qualifications to the top-finishing players. The number of players to receive such a qualification depends on the number of participants. For each 8 participants, there is one qualification.

These qualifications only qualify for the National Championship of the country in which the National Qualifier took place. They will be issued to the tournament’s top-finishing players with permanent residence in that country. If foreign players participate in a National Qualifier and finish high enough to receive a qualification, that qualification will be passed down to the next player in standings instead. Apart from the exception stated above, qualifications will not be passed down under any circumstances, even if an already-qualified player earns an additional qualification.

In 2010, each country that is covered by the European Organized Play program will have National Championships. However, some of these National Championships will be open events, with everyone from that country being able to participate. These countries will not offer National Qualifier events. Because we want to offer big, Qualifier-like events to everyone in Europe, these countries will have a very similar tournament series instead, called “Nationals Trials”:

These “Nationals Trials” will have a participation fee of EUR 4 to EUR 8 and 1 to 2 boosters of participation prizes. As with the Qualifiers, organizers will hand out additional booster prizes at their own discretion. The Top 2 players from each Trial will earn the same “Regionals” playmat available at National Qualifiers. On top of that, the winner of each Trial will win free entry to their country’s National Championships. So, although everyone will be able to participate in open Nationals, there’s still a big incentive in playing Trials, and these should turn out to be at least as interesting as Qualifiers!

Both tournament series – Qualifiers and Trials – are open to everyone: Even players who have qualified earlier are still eligible to participate in others; the same is true for Trials. For those duelists who were lucky enough to win last year’s Nationals, there’s another good news: They are qualified to this year’s Nationals automatically (or, in case of open Nationals, will get their entry sponsored)! The same is true for Dragon Duelist Nationals winners.

These events will launch in early February and run until April. More specifically, the first possible date is February 12th, and the last possible date is April 30th. A list of events that displays all Qualifiers and Trials will be online shortly, so make sure to check back to this page soon!

The following countries will have invitation-only National Championships and therefore, National Qualifiers: Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

The following countries will have open National Championships and therefore, Nationals Trials: Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, and Turkey.

Sweden, Norway and Finland will have Nationals Trials which feed into one combined open National Championship. Ireland will have National Qualifiers which feed into the UK National Championship.

The Nationals mode for Bulgaria, Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand will be determined at a later date.